ORIGIN

The Sentinel held very still, disliking the sudden closeness and touch very much. He jerked back almost at once, silent, but the stranger seemed to have gotten what she needed in that moment. Some part of him felt somehow violated at even that momentary brush, and anger flickered through him.

"It is not... to be touched," he said simply, quietly, keeping his distance. She was speaking, though, of her tongue, and attempting to demonstrate her ability. He studied it, but found that he could not replicate it--either he was doing it wrong, or his mouth and jaws simply weren't formed that way.

He compromised, in the end: claws reached out, and tapped his halberd, the quiet metallic ringing giving some vague echo to it. "Is this a sound of echoes-?" he rasped, closing his eyes, and trying again.

The quiet ringing tap held no real 'ripple' that he could hear; it was muffled, but he tried nonetheless, trudging off again for the cliffs nearby.

He stopped.

The movement was so abrupt that he nearly stumbled, and after a beat, all six eyes opened. It might have been, for Haven, eerily silent for a few seconds, and then there was a rustle as the hound lurched back into motion. But he didn't step forward; instead, he was reaching for the dark metal pocketwatch hanging around his neck, on a tarnished chain.

He pulled this slowly over his head, a moment of inspiration driving him: and then, halberd leaned up against him, he carefully wound its little metal knob.

Tick. Tick. Tick. It sprang back into life, and he lifted this, and closed his eyes. He turned, moving it farther from him, closer, listening, focusing. And after a moment, he put it into his mouth, testing this: holding it in his jaws. Then back out again, dangling, comparing.

"This piece of time is a guide," he said softly, aloud, with the tone of one coming to a conclusion. Then he set off, taking the halberd in hand, the pocketwatch hanging before him in another. His steps were slow, but careful, and he didn't stumble in the sand.

Eventually--whether by chance, or by actual hearing--he came to a halt some feet from the wall. Then he reached out, feeling--and began to move closer, and farther, shifting the pocketwatch to and fro with its quietly-echoing ticks. It wasn't very easy to hear over the crashing breakers of the bay, or the cries of the gulls, but it was there, at least, and if he listened very closely he could hear it.

At last, soft-padded hands found worn rock, and he paused there, hand flat against stone, halberd again tucked under one arm.

The eyes opened, and he turned to look for Haven. "Crystals are owed," he said at last; "It will show him where to search."

The Sentinel listened closely to Haven's correction and then, somehow, came to entirely the incorrect reformation of his words.

"The creature will show it where to find the stones," was what he settled on, though caves knew how he'd gotten there. Apparently now the Sentinel was "it," and Haven was "the creature."

His logic was not entirely clear, and he was still holding the ticking pocketwatch up in one hand.

When she spoke of flying, he turned toward her, looking away from the ticking and to the dragon, instead. And after a moment's concentration, faint blue wings sprouted from his back, curling over him.

He lifted off, after a long few seconds' focus, and hovered unsteadily, in silence, some six feet off the ground. And that is where his voice came from, next he spoke.

"It will fly," he informed Haven, and--utterly butchering this whole "form of address" thing, but at least consistent in his inconsistency--"She must only show it the way."

He followed her, ethereal wings keeping up with a different sort of effort to her physical flapping. And when she circled, he looked down, and around, and then lowered himself with a beat of those magic wings. Trails and sparks of faint blue cascaded down behind him as his feet touched down--and then they vanished, and he stood atop the rock formation--windswept, halberd in one hand.

The pocketwatch he slowly moved to hang back around his neck.

"The Sentinel will search," he assured Haven, glancing up at her where she hovered. And then, looking forward and with sudden, wry, dark humor in his tone, he added--"It knows how to count to three."

He then set off, using eyes to pick crystalline rock from stone. It did not occur to him to try and simply lie to her, and hand off regular rock, instead. A deal was a deal and in any case, it couldn't be too hard to find it, here.

He picked his way across the weathered outcrop, for a few minutes, flipping stones and peering beneath plants, before he came across the fallen tumble of scree down one half-landslided end. Here he saw the glint of crystal, and began picking his way carefully toward it, ensuring he didn't slip: one misstep would send him tumbling among the loose rocks, and down to the sea below.

The Sentinel obeyed, lifting those crystals and lightly wrapping them. This took time, but his hands were indeed hands, though they had the pads of a canine's paw. But it meant that he had fingers, and though tying knots was quite new to him, and his knots wound up strange and clumsy and haphazard, he managed.

He laid them aside as he worked, setting some five aside before he found a sixth half-buried beneath a slab of stone. His eyes picked it out against the bright light only with difficulty, and he had to feel along it to figure out what was holding it captive and to confirm that it was a crystal and not a piece of shiny rock. The stone was too heavy for him to lift, and so he turned and found another: this he held in both his hands, and brought it down as hard as he could on the middle of the slab itself.

There was a crack and it broke--no dramatic shattering, but a fracture line that gaped black along its length. The Sentinel, toiling in dutiful silence, worked these apart until he could get this crystal, too, free.

Then he hung them, tapping them one at a time, awaiting Haven's verdicts.

He did not ask why she wanted to hear them.

It didn't seem important, really.